


Cadence

by cher



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-03
Updated: 2004-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, a role is more than a role.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cadence

Sometimes, Dom has trouble drawing the line between himself and Merry. He supposes that years – and it is years now, he thinks with a vague sense of incredulity – immersed day and night in Middle Earth was bound to fuck with your head.

He suspects that they will all carry New Zealand for the rest of their lives, the land and the Fellowship somehow part of their DNA coding, cellular restructure by osmosis. He knows the others agree, and that no one really remembers who first suggested black ink under their skins. They all felt their changes long before they bound themselves with ink and curling elegant lines. Dom understands the importance of visual reminders, signals pointing to the presence of things unseen and pervasive.

Parts of Dom are defined in Elven lettering, defined by the caress of the needles on his skin. His tattoo feels like a promise, and it’s a promise that was made long before his mind caught up with the rest of him. Merry is never far away, and coded into that ink is the knowledge that he will follow his Pippin to the ends of the earth, Middle or otherwise.

New Zealand changed them all, and Dom can’t help but be grateful. He’s never been able to say with such certainty that he knew he would be found, that there is someone in the world who would search him out no matter where he was and never leave him again. His bond with Billy grew up inside him as Merry took over, and as far as he’s noticed, no one else has ever thought to question it either.

There’s this strange devotion in all of them for Elijah, carryover from Weathertop or one of a million heart-stopping moments. Dom’s seen it time and again, in himself and the others. A deference to Elijah in the name of Frodo’s eyes, and even through a drunken haze or Orli’s latest insane idea, or likely both of them together, the Fellowship closes around Elijah to insulate him from the world. It’s fucked up and stupid, but it’s part of them as surely as their ink, as surely as the way Dom sometimes wakes shaking from a nightmare, a Nazgul’s scream ringing in his ears and the threat to Pippin intolerable.

Sean Astin has it worst. Sam is as pure in his devotion to his Frodo as Merry is to Pippin, and yet Sean cannot go to Elijah. None of them ever comment on the abortive moments Sean is always making to reach out or touch or hold, but they look on with sympathy and hope that Sean can find a way to make Christine understand.

And Elijah…sometimes when he’s too tired to hide or just drunk enough not to care, the fires of Mount Doom rise in his eyes. Frodo submitted to the Ring before it was destroyed, and somewhere inside Eljiah will always be just a little tainted. Because of this, Dom and Billy don’t say anything when Elijah has flashes of cruelty, and hope quietly that Astin isn’t too far away.

Orlando tells them that Viggo still can’t let go of his sword, and laughs quietly about it, but Dom and Billy don’t have the heart to tell him he still walks as if he could run on the top of a snowdrift.

No one ever told Dom that being an actor could change a man like this, but he can’t resent the alien hobbit-thoughts that are now part of him. Not when Merry brought Pippin to him.


End file.
